IBRA needs strong leadership: President

CANBERRA (JP): President Abdurrahman Wahid said here on Tuesday that the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA) needed strong leadership to improve the performance of the agency.

"I may say there are two kinds of people. Those who are apt to become staffers and those who are apt to become leaders," Abdurrahman told reporters here in commenting on the new IBRA chief.

Before leaving for his state visit to Australia on Sunday, the President signed a decree appointing Putu Ary Suta as the new chairman of IBRA, replacing Edwin Gerungan.

By appointing Ary Suta, the President said the organization now had "a leader who had the ability to do what was right for IBRA."

Ary Suta, a former chairman of the Capital Market Supervisory Agency (Bapepam), was installed by finance minister Rizal Ramli on Monday afternoon.

Rizal himself acknowledged at the installation ceremony that IBRA, which manages over Rp 540 trillion (US$48 billion) in assets consisting of companies and bad debts, needed to work faster to restructure bad loans and sell assets.

He implicitly said that Ary Suta's main mission was to accelerate the pace of IBRA's debt restructuring and asset disposal programs.

In a related development, Gowa, a non-governmental organization active in monitoring governance in Jakarta, on Tuesday lambasted Ary Suta's appointment to such an important position given his close association with former president Soeharto's family members.

"Ary Suta had especially close relations with the Soeharto family when he was chairman of Bapepam from 1995 to 1998," Gowa's chairman Farid R. Faqih said in a statement.

Faqih said Ary Suta's reputation would not help improve the credibility of IBRA among investors and creditors. (mds/vin)